My schoolmates mocked me for being a UPF-free, ‘weird lunchbox’ kid. Turns out my mum was right all along | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

A A very specific childhood experience came from being a “weird lunchbox kid” growing up in the 90s with a food-conscious mother. It was the thrilling feeling of dread you felt when opening your school lunchbox, knowing that what it contained was going to be considered “weird” in comparison to the sliced ​​white bread, plastic ham, cheese Wotsits and Club biscuits sandwiches that everyone was gobbling up.

What is that?’” your classmate would ask, his nose wrinkled as he ate last night’s vegetarian curry, crumbled homemade falafel or – my mother’s specialty – a “deconstructed sandwich” consisting of thick fresh bread, some sort of filling (often cucumber) and the accompanying crumbs floating freely in the bag. (Why bother putting it together?, my father once asked, when we could just throw all the items away and shake?)

But now it’s 2025, and the kids with the weird lunch boxes, but more importantly, their parents, have been vindicated. continuing to reveal the adverse health consequences of consuming ultra-processed foods (UPF). More recently, diets with high levels of UPF have been linked to damage in every major organ of the human body, not to mention a range of health problems. News to some, but not to my mother, a pioneer of healthy eating and cooking from scratch, an early adopter of quinoa and reading ingredients on food packages. It was the time of Cheestrings and Micro Chips – I still know the latter’s jingle by heart – but my mother stubbornly resisted. At best, her insistence that such food was unhealthy fell on deaf ears, and at worst, she was crudely mocked, including by me. I knew what an E number was before I knew my multiplication tables. If an unrefined carbohydrate existed, my mother knew it.

Nowadays, people talk about UPFs in general conversations. Books and social media accounts dedicated to eliminating them from your diet have hundreds of thousands of followers. This must be a strange feeling for my mother, after being ignored – and even actively fought against – on this topic for so long. I’ve written before about having to hide packs of Super Noodles the same way my friends hid packs of 10 cigarettes, a line that still makes her laugh out loud. We once argued over a bag of Pom-Bear chips. There were times when all I wanted to do was eat like the other kids, and this battle played out every week in our house. Mine can’t be the only weird lunch box mom who finds herself with the constant feeling of “I told you so.” And I can’t be the only weird kid who, after decades of denial, is left with a feeling of… what is it – guilt? Or, perhaps even stranger, could it be gratitude?

I’m a mother myself now, and I cook from scratch, just like my husband. Cooked meals are rare here. Now I’m the one standing in the supermarket aisle, reading long lists of ingredients on the back of packages. Like my own mother, I try to make a roast most Sundays and, although I have sometimes resorted to using gravy granules, I mainly make mine from gravy, as she taught me and as her mother taught her. I say this not to brag, but to highlight the benefits of education around food and cooking. These skills have made a big difference in my ability to feed myself and my family in a healthy way. I feel like I owe a lot to my mother for that.

Too much discussion of FPU is divorced from issues of class and economics and seems shameful, especially towards women. Cooking from scratch doesn’t make me better than someone who can’t. It just means I was taught to do it and have the resources to do it. I’m lucky enough to be able to buy sausages from the butcher that contain fewer additives. In the 90s, my mother, feeding us on a shoestring budget, had to go to the health food store or drive to the supermarket that sold the cheapest cuts of meat. Not everyone has enough time to do this, or to cook at home, especially in 2025, when we are working more hours than ever.

In some ways, it’s easier than ever to eat healthily, as alternatives to UPFs are more widely and easily available. This is a positive result of the importance of this debate, even if the cost of living remains a major obstacle. What I like less is when the moral burden falls on individuals, usually the poorest, rather than on the retailers and companies that profit from the sale of UPFs. Years before this conversation reached the general public, my mother would insist that the problem was systemic and required systemic solutions. She was never satisfied either. Gwyneth Paltrow: I’m pretty sure she still prefers eating cheese from a can to smoking crack.

And look, I’m not going to say sorry to him for being 13 and wanting to eat a bag of Pom-Bears. Sometimes I just don’t want to hear it, especially since everyone is also talking about junk food now. We still don’t agree on Super Noodles, even though I’ve moved on to ramen in proper packets. A recent study linked instant noodles to serious health problems due to their high salt content. In this sense, my mother was always right. In another, they’re so delicious I can’t help myself. Sorry, Mom.